“Some people think because I’m an elected public official I should accept that. But I won’t accept that, or demonstrations outside our house.

"The letters are not with reference to Palestine. I’m referring to general abuse around the cuts.”

Liverpool’s Labour council must find an eye-watering £156m of savings over the next three years, due to massive cuts in Central Government funding made by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition.

The mayor accused Liverpool Rise For Palestine (LRFP) of “abusive and intimidating behaviour” and posted a picture of them on Twitter as they protested outside his house on Friday.

Police attended the incident at around 7.15pm and said no arrests were made.

Mayor Anderson said: “They frightened my 86-year-old mother-in-law who lives with us and that is despicable. They were right at the front garden shouting.

“My wife was literally shaking and frightened and she was like that all night. That’s not democratic, legal lobbying. That’s just intimidation and thuggery.”

He added he was willing to talk to protesters at his office.

However, the campaigners defended their actions, saying the council had “prevaricated over the use of G4S as a security contractor” despite the company’s alleged complicity with Israeli human rights abuses, which the firm denies.

LRFP said it took the “hard choice” to escalate its protests due to the council’s refusal to sever its G4S contracts.

A LRFP spokesman said: “Mayor Anderson will shortly be full of ‘hard choices’.

“It will be his cop-out when he demands massive cuts in services and jobs across the city for the fifth year running.

“These are the real acts of ‘intimidation and thuggery’. They destroy people’s lives and break up families.

“He will cry and wring his hands and say how terrible his position is, but he will do whatever the government requires.

“‘Hard choices’ has become his, and the political class’s, euphemism for savaging the conditions of the working class on the one hand, while keeping hold of its own privileged position on the other.

“Liverpool Rise for Palestine will continue to make ‘hard choices’, but they will be ‘hard choices’ in support of the people of Palestine rather than on behalf of a discredited privileged elite.